The Hand of Ethelberta Read Online

Napper, who had returned to her original spot.

‘Yes—the best song she has written is to be sung in the best manner to the best air that has been composed for it.  I should not wonder if she were going to sing it herself.’

‘Did you know anything of Mrs. Petherwin until her name leaked out in connection with these ballads?’

‘No; but I think I recollect seeing her once before.  She is one of those people who are known, as one may say, by subscription: everybody knows a little, till she is astonishingly well known altogether; but nobody knows her entirely.  She was the orphan child of some clergyman, I believe.  Lady Petherwin, her mother-in-law, has been taking her about a great deal latterly.’

‘She has apparently a very good prospect.’

‘Yes; and it is through her being of that curious undefined character which interprets itself to each admirer as whatever he would like to have it.  Old men like her because she is so girlish; youths because she is womanly; wicked men because she is good in their eyes; good men because she is wicked in theirs.’

‘She must be a very anomalous sort of woman, at that rate.’

‘Yes.  Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.’

‘These poems must have set her up.  She appears to be quite the correct spectacle.  Happy Mrs. Petherwin!’

The subject of their dialogue was engaged in a conversation with Mrs. Belmaine upon the management of households—a theme provoked by a discussion that was in progress in the pages of some periodical of the time.  Mrs. Belmaine was very full of the argument, and went on from point to point till she came to servants.

The face of Ethelberta showed caution at once.

‘I consider that Lady Plamby pets her servants by far too much,’ said Mrs. Belmaine.  ‘O, you do not know her?  Well, she is a woman with theories; and she lends her maids and men books of the wrong kind for their station, and sends them to picture exhibitions which they don’t in the least understand—all for the improvement of their taste, and morals, and nobody knows what besides.  It only makes them dissatisfied.’

The face of Ethelberta showed venturesomeness.  ‘Yes, and dreadfully ambitious!’ she said.

‘Yes, indeed.  What a turn the times have taken!  People of that sort push on, and get into business, and get great warehouses, until at last, without ancestors, or family, or name, or estate—’

‘Or the merest scrap of heirloom or family jewel.’

‘Or heirlooms, or family jewels, they are thought as much of as if their forefathers had glided unobtrusively through the peerage—’

‘Ever since the first edition.’

‘Yes.’  Mrs. Belmaine, who really sprang from a good old family, had been going to say, ‘for the last seven hundred years,’ but fancying from Ethelberta’s addendum that she might not date back more than a trifling century or so, adopted the suggestion with her usual well-known courtesy, and blushed down to her locket at the thought of the mistake that she might have made.  This sensitiveness was a trait in her character which gave great gratification to her husband, and, indeed, to all who knew her.

‘And have you any theory on the vexed question of servant-government?’ continued Mrs. Belmaine, smiling.  ‘But no—the subject is of far too practical a nature for one of your bent, of course.’

‘O no—it is not at all too practical.  I have thought of the matter often,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘I think the best plan would be for somebody to write a pamphlet, “The Shortest Way with the Servants,” just as there was once written a terribly stinging one, “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters,” which had a great effect.’

‘I have always understood that that was written by a dissenter as a satire upon the Church?’

‘Ah—so it was: but the example will do to illustrate my meaning.’

‘Quite so—I understand—so it will,’ said Mrs. Belmaine, with clouded faculties.

Meanwhile Christopher’s music had arrived.  An accomplished gentleman who had every musical talent except that of creation, scanned the notes carefully from top to bottom, and sat down to accompany the singer.  There was no lady present of sufficient confidence or skill to venture into a song she had never seen before, and the only one who had seen it was Ethelberta herself; she did not deny having practised it the greater part of the afternoon, and was very willing to sing it now if anybody would derive pleasure from the performance.  Then she began, and the sweetness of her singing was such that even the most unsympathetic honoured her by looking as if they would be willing to listen to every note the song contained if it were not quite so much trouble to do so.  Some were so interested that, instead of continuing their conversation, they remained in silent consideration of how they would continue it when she had finished; while the particularly civil people arranged their countenances into every attentive form that the mind could devise.  One emotional gentleman looked at the corner of a chair as if, till that moment, such an object had never crossed his vision before; the movement of his finger to the imagined tune was, for a deaf old clergyman, a perfect mine of interest; whilst a young man from the country was powerless to put an end to an enchanted gaze at nothing at all in the exact middle of the room before him.  Neigh, and the general phalanx of cool men and celebrated club yawners, were so much affected that they raised their chronic look of great objection to things, to an expression of scarcely any objection at all.

‘What makes it so interesting,’ said Mrs. Doncastle to Ethelberta, when the song was over and she had retired from the focus of the company, ‘is, that it is played from the composer’s own copy, which has never met the public eye, or any other than his own before to-day.  And I see that he has actually sketched in the lines by hand, instead of having ruled paper—just as the great old composers used to do.  You must have been as pleased to get it fresh from the stocks like that as he probably was pleased to get your thanks.’

Ethelberta became reflective.  She had not thanked Christopher; moreover, she had decided, after some consideration, that she ought not to thank him.  What new thoughts were suggested by that remark of Mrs. Doncastle’s, and what new inclination resulted from the public presentation of his tune and her words as parts of one organic whole, are best explained by describing her doings at a later hour, when, having left her friends somewhat early, she had reached home and retired from public view for that evening.

Ethelberta went to her room, sent away the maid who did double duty for herself and Lady Petherwin, walked in circles about the carpet till the fire had grown haggard and cavernous, sighed, took a sheet of paper and wrote:—

‘DEAR MR. JULIAN,—I have said I would not write: I have said it twice; but discretion, under some circumstances, is only another name for unkindness.  Before thanking you for your sweet gift, let me tell you in a few words of something which may materially change an aspect of affairs under which I appear to you to deserve it.

‘With regard to my history and origin you are altogether mistaken; and how can I tell whether your bitterness at my previous silence on those points may not cause you to withdraw your act of courtesy now?  But the gratification of having at last been honest with you may compensate even for the loss of your respect.

‘The matter is a small one to tell, after all.  What will you say on learning that I am not the trodden-down “lady by birth” that you have supposed me?  That my father is not dead, as you probably imagine; that he is working for his living as one among a peculiarly stigmatized and ridiculed multitude?

‘Had he been a brawny cottager, carpenter, mason, blacksmith, well-digger, navvy, tree-feller—any effective and manly trade, in short, a worker in which can stand up in the face of the noblest and daintiest, and bare his gnarled arms and say, with a consciousness of superior power, “Look at a real man!” I should have been able to show you antecedents which, if not intensely romantic, are not altogether antagonistic to romance.  But the present fashion of associating with one particular class everything that is ludicrous and bombastic overpowers me when I think of it in relation to myself and your known sensitiveness.  When the well-born poetess of good report melts into. . .’

Having got thus far, a faint-hearted look, which had begun to show itself several sentences earlier, became pronounced.  She threw the writing into the dull fire, poked and stirred it till a red inflammation crept over the sheet, and then started anew:—

‘DEAR MR. JULIAN,—Not knowing your present rank as composer—whether on the very brink of fame, or as yet a long way off—I cannot decide what form of expression my earnest acknowledgments should take.  Let me simply say in one short phrase, I thank you infinitely!

‘I am no musician, and my opinion on music may not be worth much: yet I know what I like (as everybody says, but I do not use the words as a form to cover a hopeless blank on all connected with the subject), and this sweet air I love.  You must have glided like a breeze about me—seen into a heart not worthy of scrutiny, jotted down words that cannot justify attention—before you could have apotheosized the song in so exquisite a manner.  My gratitude took the form of wretchedness when, on hearing the effect of the ballad in public this evening, I thought that I had not power to withhold a reply which might do us both more harm than good.  Then I said, “Away with all emotion—I wish the world was drained dry of it—I will take no notice,” when a lady whispered at my elbow to the effect that of course I had expressed my gratification to you.  I ought first to have mentioned that your creation has been played to-night to full drawing-rooms, and the original tones cooled the artificial air like a fountain almost.

‘I prophesy great things of you.  Perhaps, at the time when we are each but a row of bones in our individual graves, your genius will be remembered, while my mere cleverness will have been long forgotten.

‘But—you must allow a woman of experience to say this—the undoubted power that you possess will do you socially no good unless you mix with it the ingredient of ambition—a quality in which I fear you are very deficient.  It is in the hope of stimulating you to a better opinion of yourself that I write this letter.

‘Probably I shall never meet you again.  Not that I think circumstances to be particularly powerful to prevent such a meeting, rather it is that I shall energetically avoid it.  There can be no such thing as strong friendship between a man and a woman not of one family.

‘More than that there must not be, and this is why we will not meet.  You see that I do not mince matters at all; but it is hypocrisy to avoid touching upon a subject which all men and women in our position inevitably think of, no matter what they say.  Some women might have written distantly, and wept at the repression of their real feeling; but it is better to be more frank, and keep a dry eye.—Yours,      ETHELBERTA.’

Her feet felt cold and her heart weak as she directed the letter, and she was overpowered with weariness.  But murmuring, ‘If I let it stay till the morning I shall not send it, and a man may be lost to fame because of a woman’s squeamishness—it shall go,’ she partially dressed herself, wrapped a large cloak around her, descended the stairs, and went out to the pillar-box at the corner, leaving the door not quite close.  No gust of wind had realized her misgivings that it might be blown shut on her return, and she re-entered as softly as she had emerged.

It will be seen that Ethelberta had said nothing about her family after all.

10. LADY PETHERWIN’S HOUSE

The next day old Lady Petherwin, who had not accompanied Ethelberta the night before, came into the morning-room, with a newspaper in her hand.

‘What does this mean, Ethelberta?’ she inquired in tones from which every shade of human expressiveness was extracted by some awful and imminent mood that lay behind.  She was pointing to a paragraph under the heading of ‘Literary Notes,’ which contained in a few words the announcement of Ethelberta’s authorship that had more circumstantially appeared in the Wessex Reflector.

‘It means what it says,’ said Ethelberta quietly.

‘Then it is true?’

‘Yes.  I must apologize for having kept it such a secret from you.  It was not done in the spirit that you may imagine: it was merely to avoid disturbing your mind that I did it so privately.’

‘But surely you have not written every one of those ribald verses?’

Ethelberta looked inclined to exclaim most vehemently against this; but what she actually did say was, ‘“Ribald”—what do you mean by that?  I don’t think that you are aware what “ribald” means.’

‘I am not sure that I am.  As regards some words as well as some persons, the less you are acquainted with them the more it is to your credit.’

‘I don’t quite deserve this, Lady Petherwin.’

‘Really, one would imagine that women wrote their books during those dreams in which people have no moral sense, to see how improper some, even virtuous, ladies become when they get into print.’

‘I might have done a much more unnatural thing than write those poems.  And perhaps I might have done a much better thing, and got less praise.  But that’s the world’s fault, not mine.’

‘You might have left them unwritten, and shown more fidelity.’

‘Fidelity! it is more a matter of humour than principle.  What has fidelity to do with it?’

‘Fidelity to my dear boy’s memory.’

‘It would be difficult to show that because I have written so-called tender and gay verse, I feel tender and gay.  It is too often assumed that a person’s fancy is a person’s real mind.  I believe that in the majority of cases one is fond of imagining the direct opposite of one’s principles in sheer effort after something fresh and free; at any rate, some of the lightest of those rhymes were composed between the deepest fits of dismals I have ever known.  However, I did expect that you might judge in the way you have judged, and that was my chief reason for not telling you what I had done.’

‘You don’t deny that you tried to escape from recollections you ought to have cherished?  There is only one thing that women of your sort are as ready to do as to take a man’s name, and that is, drop his memory.’

‘Dear Lady Petherwin—don’t be so unreasonable as to blame a live person for living!  No woman’s head is so small as to be filled for life by a memory of a few months.  Four years have passed since I last saw my boy-husband.  We were mere children; see how I have altered since in mind, substance, and outline—I have even grown half an inch taller since his death.  Two years will exhaust the regrets of widows who have long been faithful wives; and ought I not to show a little new life when my husband died in the honeymoon?’

‘No.  Accepting the protection of your husband’s mother was, in effect, an avowal that you rejected the idea of being a widow to prolong the idea of being a wife; and the sin against your conventional state thus assumed is almost as bad as would have been a sin against the married state itself.  If you had gone off when he died, saying, “Thank heaven, I am free!” you would, at any rate, have shown some real honesty.’

‘I should have been more virtuous by being more unfeeling.  That often happens.’

‘I have taken to you, and made a great deal of you—given you the inestimable advantages of foreign travel and good society to enlarge your mind.  In short, I have been like a Naomi to you in everything, and I maintain that writing these poems saps the foundation of it all.’

‘I do own that you have been a very good Naomi to me thus far; but Ruth was quite a fast widow in comparison with me, and yet Naomi never blamed her.  You are unfortunate in your illustration.  But it is dreadfully flippant of me to answer you like this, for you have been kind.  But why will you provoke me!’

‘Yes, you are flippant, Ethelberta.  You are too much given to that sort of thing.’

‘Well, I don’t know how the secret of my name has leaked out; and I am not ribald, or anything you say,’ said Ethelberta, with a sigh.

‘Then you own you do not feel so ardent as you seem in your book?’

‘I do own it.’

‘And that you are sorry your name has been published in connection with it?’

‘I am.’

‘And you think the verses may tend to misrepresent your character as a gay and rapturous one, when it is not?’

‘I do fear it.’

‘Then, of course, you will suppress the poems instantly.  That is the only way in which you can regain the position you have hitherto held with me.’

Ethelberta said nothing; and the dull winter atmosphere had far from light enough in it to show by her face what she might be thinking.

‘Well?’ said Lady Petherwin.

‘I did not expect such a command as that,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘I have been obedient for four years, and would continue so—but I cannot suppress the poems.  They are not mine now to suppress.’

‘You must get them into your hands.  Money will do it, I suppose?’

‘Yes, I suppose it would—a thousand pounds.’

‘Very well; the money shall be forthcoming,’ said Lady Petherwin, after a pause.  ‘You had better sit down and write about it at once.’

‘I cannot do it,’ said Ethelberta; ‘and I will not.  I don’t wish them to be suppressed.  I am not ashamed of them; there is nothing to be ashamed of in them; and I shall not take any steps in the matter.’

‘Then you are an ungrateful woman, and wanting in natural affection for the dead!  Considering your birth—’

‘That’s an intolerable—’

Lady Petherwin crashed out of the room in a wind of indignation, and went upstairs and heard no more.  Adjoining her chamber was a smaller one called her study, and, on reaching this, she unlocked a cabinet, took out a small deed-box, removed from it a folded packet, unfolded it, crumpled it up, and turning round suddenly flung it into the fire.  Then she stood and beheld it eaten away word after word by the flames, ‘Testament’—‘all that freehold’—‘heirs and assigns’ appearing occasionally for a moment only to disappear for ever.  Nearly half the document had turned into a glossy black when the lady clasped her hands.

‘What have I done!’ she exclaimed.  Springing to the tongs she seized with them the portion of the writing yet unconsumed, and dragged it out of the fire.  Ethelberta appeared at the door.

‘Quick, Ethelberta!’ said Lady Petherwin.  ‘Help me to put this out!’  And the two women went trampling wildly upon the document and smothering it with a corner of the hearth-rug.

‘What is it?’ said Ethelberta.

‘My will!’ said Lady Petherwin.  ‘I have kept it by me lately, for I have wished to look over it at leisure—’

‘Good heavens!’ said Ethelberta.  ‘And I was just coming in to tell you that I would always cling to you, and never desert you, ill-use me how you might!’

‘Such an affectionate remark sounds curious at such a time,’ said Lady Petherwin, sinking down in a chair at the end of the struggle.

‘But,’ cried Ethelberta, ‘you don’t suppose—’

‘Selfishness, my dear, has given me such crooked looks that I can see it round a corner.’

‘If you mean that what is yours to give may not be mine to take, it would be as well to name it in an impersonal way, if you must name it at all,’ said the daughter-in-law, with wet eyelids.  ‘God knows I had no selfish thought in saying that.  I came upstairs to ask you to forgive me, and knew nothing about the will.  But every explanation distorts it all the more!’

‘We two have got all awry, dear—it cannot be concealed—awry—awry.  Ah, who shall set us right again?  However, now I must send for Mr. Chancerly—no, I am going out on other business, and I will call upon him.  There, don’t spoil your eyes: you may have to sell them.’

She rang the bell and ordered the carriage; and half-an-hour later Lady Petherwin’s coachman drove his mistress up to the door of her lawyer’s office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

11. SANDBOURNE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD—SOME LONDON STREETS

While this was going on in town, Christopher, at his lodgings in Sandbourne, had been thrown into rare old visions and dreams by the appearance of Ethelberta’s letter.  Flattered and encouraged to ambition as well as to love by her inspiriting sermon, he put off now the last remnant of cynical doubt upon the genuineness of his old mistress, and once and for all set down as disloyal a belief he had latterly acquired that ‘Come, woo me, woo me; for I am like enough to consent,’ was all a young woman had to tell.

All the reasoning of political and social economists would not have convinced Christopher that he had a better chance in London than in Sandbourne of making a decent income by reasonable and likely labour; but a belief in a far more improbable proposition, impetuously expressed, warmed him with the idea that he might become famous there.  The greater is frequently more readily credited than the less, and an argument which will not convince on a matter of halfpence appears unanswerable when applied to questions of glory and honour.

The regulation wet towel and strong coffee of the ambitious and intellectual student floated before him in visions; but it was with a sense of relief that he remembered that music, in spite of its drawbacks as a means of sustenance, was a profession happily unencumbered with those excruciating preliminaries to greatness.

Christopher talked about the new move to his sister, and he was vexed that her hopefulness was not roused to quite the pitch of his own.  As with others of his sort, his too general habit of accepting the most clouded possibility that chances offered was only transcended by his readiness to kindle with a fitful excitement now and then.  Faith was much more equable.  ‘If you were not the most melancholy man God ever created,’ she said, kindly looking at his vague deep eyes and thin face, which was but a few degrees too refined and poetical to escape the epithet of lantern-jawed from any one who had quarrelled with him, ‘you would not mind my coolness about this.  It is a good thing of course to go; I have always fancied that we were mistaken in coming here.  Mediocrity stamped “London” fetches more than talent marked “provincial.”  But I cannot feel so enthusiastic.’

‘Still, if we are to go, we may as well go by enthusiasm as by calculation; it is a sensation pleasanter to the nerves, and leads to just as good a result when there is only one result possible.’

‘Very well,’ said Faith.  ‘I will not depress you.  If I had to describe you I should say you were a child in your impulses, and an old man in your reflections.  Have you considered when we shall start?’

‘Yes.’

‘What have you thought?’

‘That we may very well leave the place in six weeks if we wish.’

‘We really may?’

‘Yes.  And what is more, we will.’

* * * * *

Christopher and Faith arrived in London on an afternoon at the end of winter, and beheld from one of the river bridges snow-white scrolls of steam from the tall chimneys of Lambeth, rising against the livid sky behind, as if drawn in chalk on toned cardboard.

The first thing he did that evening, when settled in their apartments near the British Museum, before applying himself to the beginning of the means by which success in life might be attained, was to go out in the direction of Ethelberta’s door, leaving Faith unpacking the things, and sniffing extraordinary smoke-smells which she discovered in all nooks and crannies of the rooms.  It was some satisfaction to see Ethelberta’s house, although the single feature in which it differed from the other houses in the Crescent was that no lamp shone from the fanlight over the entrance—a speciality which, if he cared for omens, was hardly encouraging.  Fearing to linger near lest he might be detected, Christopher stole a glimpse at the door and at the steps, imagined what a trifle of the depression worn in each step her feet had tended to produce, and strolled home again.

Feeling that his reasons for calling just now were scarcely sufficient, he went next day about the business that had brought him to town, which referred to a situation as organist in a large church in the north-west district.  The post was half ensured already, and he intended to make of it the nucleus of a professional occupation and income.  Then he sat down to think of the preliminary steps towards publishing the song that had so pleased her, and had also, as far as he could understand from her letter, hit the popular taste very successfully; a fact which, however little it may say for the virtues of the song as a composition, was a great recommendation to it as a property.  Christopher was delighted to perceive that out of this position he could frame an admissible, if not an unimpeachable, reason for calling upon Ethelberta.  He determined to do so at once, and obtain the required permission by word of mouth.

He was greatly surprised, when the front of the house appeared in view on this spring afternoon, to see what a white and sightless aspect pervaded all the windows.  He came close: the eyeball blankness was caused by all the shutters and blinds being shut tight from top to bottom.  Possibly this had been the case for some time—he could not tell.  In one of the windows was a card bearing the announcement, ‘This House to be let Furnished.’  Here was a merciless clash between fancy and fact.  Regretting now his faint-heartedness in not letting her know beforehand by some means that he was about to make a new start in the world, and coming to dwell near her, Christopher rang the bell to make inquiries.  A gloomy caretaker appeared after a while, and the young man asked whither the ladies had gone to live.  He was beyond measure depressed to learn that they were in the South of France—Arles, the man thought the place was called—the time of their return to town being very uncertain; though one thing was clear, they meant to miss the forthcoming London season altogether.

As Christopher’s hope to see her again had brought a resolve to do so, so now resolve led to dogged patience.  Instead of attempting anything by letter, he decided to wait; and he waited well, occupying himself in publishing a ‘March’ and a ‘Morning and Evening Service in E flat.’  Some four-part songs, too, engaged his attention when the heavier duties of the day were over—these duties being the giving of lessons in harmony and counterpoint, in which he was aided by the introductions of a man well known in the musical world, who had been acquainted with young Julian as a promising amateur long before he adopted music as the staff of his pilgrimage.

It was the end of summer when he again tried his fortune at the house in Exonbury Crescent.  Scarcely calculating upon finding her at this stagnant time of the town year, and only hoping for information, Julian was surprised and excited to see the shutters open, and the house wearing altogether a living look, its neighbours having decidedly died off meanwhile.

‘The family here,’ said a footman in answer to his inquiry, ‘are only temporary tenants of the house.  It is not Lady Petherwin’s people.’

‘Do you know the Petherwins’ present address?’

‘Underground, sir, for the old lady.  She died some time ago in Switzerland, and was buried there, I believe.’

‘And Mrs. Petherwin—the young lady,’ said Christopher, starting.

‘We are not acquainted personally with the family,’ the man replied.  ‘My master has only taken the house for a few months, whilst extensive alterations are being made in his own on the other side of the park, which he goes to look after every day.  If you want any further information about Lady Petherwin, Mrs. Petherwin will probably give it.  I can let you have her address.’

‘Ah, yes; thank you,’ said Christopher.

The footman handed him one of some cards which appeared to have been left for the purpose.  Julian, though tremblingly anxious to know where Ethelberta was, did not look at it till he could take a cool survey in private.  The address was ‘Arrowthorne Lodge, Upper Wessex.’

‘Dear me!’ said Christopher to himself, ‘not far from Melchester; and not dreadfully far from Sandbourne.’

12. ARROWTHORNE PARK AND LODGE

Summer was just over when Christopher Julian found himself rattling along in the train to Sandbourne on some trifling business appertaining to his late father’s affairs, which would afford him an excuse for calling at Arrowthorne about the song of hers that he wished to produce.  He alighted in the afternoon at a little station some twenty miles short of Sandbourne, and leaving his portmanteau behind him there, decided to walk across the fields, obtain if possible the interview with the lady, and return then to the station to finish the journey to Sandbourne, which he could thus reach at a convenient hour in the evening, and, if he chose, take leave of again the next day.

It was an afternoon which had a fungous smell out of doors, all being sunless and stagnant overhead and around.  The various species of trees had begun to assume the more distinctive colours of their decline, and where there had been one pervasive green were now twenty greenish yellows, the air in the vistas between them being half opaque with blue exhalation.  Christopher in his walk overtook a countryman, and inquired if the path they were following would lead him to Arrowthorne Lodge.

‘’Twill take ’ee into Arr’thorne Park,’ the man replied.  ‘But you won’t come anigh the Lodge, unless you bear round to the left as might be.’

‘Mrs. Petherwin lives there, I believe?’

‘No, sir.  Leastwise unless she’s but lately come.  I have never heard of such a woman.’

‘She may possibly be only visiting there.’

‘Ah, perhaps that’s the shape o’t.  Well, now you tell o’t, I have seen a strange face thereabouts once or twice lately.  A young good-looking maid enough, seemingly.’

‘Yes, she’s considered a very handsome lady.’

‘I’ve heard the woodmen say, now that you tell o’t, that they meet her every now and then, just at the closing in of the day, as they come home along with their nitches of sticks; ay, stalking about under the trees by herself—a tall black martel, so long-legged and awful-like that you’d think ’twas the old feller himself a-coming, they say.  Now a woman must be a queer body to my thinking, to roam about by night so lonesome and that?  Ay, now that you tell o’t, there is such a woman, but ’a never have showed in the parish; sure I never thought who the body was—no, not once about her, nor where ’a was living and that—not I, till you spoke.  Well, there, sir, that’s Arr’thorne Lodge; do you see they three elms?’  He pointed across the glade towards some confused foliage a long way off.

‘I am not sure about the sort of tree you mean,’ said Christopher, ‘I see a number of trees with edges shaped like edges of clouds.’

‘Ay, ay, they be oaks; I mean the elms to the left hand.’

‘But a man can hardly tell oaks from elms at that distance, my good fellow!’

‘That ’a can very well—leastwise, if he’s got the sense.’

‘Well, I think I see what you mean,’ said Christopher.  ‘What next?’

‘When you get there, you bear away smart to nor’-west, and you’ll come straight as a line to the Lodge.’

‘How the deuce am I to know which is north-west in a strange place, with no sun to tell me?’

‘What, not know nor-west?  Well, I should think a boy could never live and grow up to be a man without knowing the four quarters.  I knowed ’em when I was a mossel of a chiel.  We be no great scholars here, that’s true, but there isn’t a Tom-rig or Jack-straw in these parts that don’t know where they lie as well as I.  Now I’ve lived, man and boy, these eight-and-sixty years, and never met a man in my life afore who hadn’t learnt such a common thing as the four quarters.’

Christopher parted from his companion and soon reached a stile, clambering over which he entered a park.  Here he threaded his way, and rounding a clump of aged trees the young man came in view of a light and elegant country-house in the half-timbered Gothic style of the late revival, apparently only a few years old.  Surprised at finding himself so near, Christopher’s heart fluttered unmanageably till he had taken an abstract view of his position, and, in impatience at his want of nerve, adopted a sombre train of reasoning to convince himself that, far from indulgence in the passion of love bringing bliss, it was a folly, leading to grief and disquiet—certainly one which would do him no good.  Cooled down by this, he stepped into the drive and went up to the house.

‘Is Mrs. Petherwin at home?’ he said modestly.

‘Who did you say, sir?’

He repeated the name.

‘Don’t know the person.’

‘The lady may be a visitor—I call on business.’

‘She is not visiting in this house, sir.’

‘Is not this Arrowthorne Lodge?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Then where is Arrowthorne Lodge, please?’

‘Well, it is nearly a mile from here.  Under the trees by the high-road.  If you go across by that footpath it will bring you out quicker than by following the bend of the drive.’

Christopher wondered how he could have managed to get into the wrong park; but, setting it down to his ignorance of the difference between oak and elm, he immediately retraced his steps, passing across the park again, through the gate at the end of the drive, and into the turnpike road.  No other gate, park, or country seat of any description was within view.

‘Can you tell me the way to Arrowthorne Lodge?’ he inquired of the first person he met, who was a little girl.

‘You are just coming away from it, sir,’ said she.  ‘I’ll show you; I am going that way.’

They walked along together.  Getting abreast the entrance of the park he had just emerged from, the child said, ‘There it is, sir; I live there too.’

Christopher, with a dazed countenance, looked towards a cottage which stood nestling in the shrubbery and ivy like a mushroom among grass.  ‘Is that Arrowthorne Lodge?’ he repeated.

‘Yes, and if you go up the drive, you come to Arrowthorne House.’

‘Arrowthorne Lodge—where Mrs. Petherwin lives, I mean.’

‘Yes.  She lives there along wi’ mother and we.  But she don’t want anybody to know it, sir, cause she’s celebrate, and ’twouldn’t do at all.’

Christopher said no more, and the little girl became interested in the products of the bank and ditch by the wayside.  He left her, pushed open the heavy gate, and tapped at the Lodge door.

The latch was lifted.  ‘Does Mrs. Petherwin,’ he began, and, determined that there should be no mistake, repeated, ‘Does Mrs. Ethelberta Petherwin, the poetess, live here?’ turning full upon the person who opened the door.

‘She does, sir,’ said a faltering voice; and he found himself face to face with the pupil-teacher of Sandbourne.

13. THE LODGE (continued)—THE COPSE BEHIND

‘This is indeed a surprise; I—am glad to see you!’ Christopher stammered, with a wire-drawn, radically different smile from the one he had intended—a smile not without a tinge of ghastliness.

‘Yes—I am home for the holidays,’ said the blushing maiden; and, after a critical pause, she added, ‘If you wish to speak to my sister, she is in the plantation with the children.’

‘O no—no, thank you—not necessary at all,’ said Christopher, in haste.  ‘I only wish for an interview with a lady called Mrs. Petherwin.’

‘Yes; Mrs Petherwin—my sister,’ said Picotee.  ‘She is in the plantation.  That little path will take you to her in five minutes.’

The amazed Christopher persuaded himself that this discovery was very delightful, and went on persuading so long that at last he felt it to be so.  Unable, like many other people, to enjoy being satirized in words because of the irritation it caused him as aimed-at victim, he sometimes had philosophy enough to appreciate a satire of circumstance, because nobody intended it.  Pursuing the path indicated, he found himself in a thicket of scrubby undergrowth, which covered an area enclosed from the park proper by a decaying fence.  The boughs were so tangled that he was obliged to screen his face with his hands, to escape the risk of having his eyes filliped out by the twigs that impeded his progress.  Thus slowly advancing, his ear caught, between the rustles, the tones of a voice in earnest declamation; and, pushing round in that direction, he beheld through some beech boughs an open space about ten yards in diameter, floored at the bottom with deep beds of curled old leaves, and cushions of furry moss.  In the middle of this natural theatre was the stump of a tree that had been felled by a saw, and upon the flat stool thus formed stood Ethelberta, whom Christopher had not beheld since the ball at Wyndway House.

Round her, leaning against branches or prostrate on the ground, were five or six individuals.  Two were young mechanics—one of them evidently a carpenter.  Then there was a boy about thirteen, and two or three younger children.  Ethelberta’s appearance answered as fully as ever to that of an English lady skilfully perfected in manner, carriage, look, and accent; and the incongruity of her present position among lives which had had many of Nature’s beauties stamped out of them, and few of the beauties of Art stamped in, brought him, as a second feeling, a pride in her that almost equalled his first sentiment of surprise.  Christopher’s attention was meanwhile attracted from the constitution of the group to the words of the speaker in the centre of it—words to which her auditors were listening with still attention.

It appeared to Christopher that Ethelberta had lately been undergoing some very extraordinary experiences.  What the beginning of them had been he could not in the least understand, but the portion she was describing came distinctly to his ears, and he wondered more and more.

‘He came forward till he, like myself, was about twenty yards from the edge.  I instinctively grasped my useless stiletto.  How I longed for the assistance which a little earlier I had so much despised!  Reaching the block or boulder upon which I had been sitting, he clasped his arms around from behind; his hands closed upon the empty seat, and he jumped up with an oath.  This method of attack told me a new thing with wretched distinctness; he had, as I suppose, discovered my sex, male attire was to serve my turn no longer.  The next instant, indeed, made it clear, for he exclaimed, “You don’t escape me, masquerading madam,” or some such words, and came on.  My only hope was that in his excitement he might forget to notice where the grass terminated near the edge of the cliff, though this could be easily felt by a careful walker: to make my own feeling more distinct on this point I hastily bared my feet.’

The listeners moistened their lips, Ethelberta took breath, and then went on to describe the scene that ensued, ‘A dreadful variation on the game of Blindman’s buff,’ being the words by which she characterized it.

Ethelberta’s manner had become so impassioned at this point that the lips of her audience parted, the children clung to their elders, and Christopher could control himself no longer.  He thrust aside the boughs, and broke in upon the group.

‘For Heaven’s sake, Ethelberta,’ he exclaimed with great excitement, ‘where did you meet with such a terrible experience as that?’

The children shrieked, as if they thought that the interruption was in some way the catastrophe of the events in course of narration.  Every one started up; the two young mechanics stared, and one of them inquired, in return, ‘What’s the matter, friend?’

Christopher had not yet made reply when Ethelberta stepped from her pedestal down upon the crackling carpet of deep leaves.

‘Mr. Julian!’ said she, in a serene voice, turning upon him eyes of such a disputable stage of colour, between brown and grey, as would have commended itself to a gallant duellist of the last century as a point on which it was absolutely necessary to take some friend’s life or other.  But the calmness was artificially done, and the astonishment that did not appear in Ethelberta’s tones was expressed by her gaze.  Christopher was not in a mood to draw fine distinctions between recognized and unrecognized organs of speech.  He replied to the eyes.

‘I own that your surprise is natural,’ he said, with an anxious look into her face, as if he wished to get beyond this interpolated scene to something more congenial and understood.  ‘But my concern at such a history of yourself since I last saw you is even more natural than your surprise at my manner of breaking in.’

‘That history would justify any conduct in one who hears it—’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘If it were true,’ added Ethelberta, smiling.  ‘But it is as false as—’  She could name nothing notoriously false without raising an image of what was disagreeable, and she continued in a better manner: ‘The story I was telling is entirely a fiction, which I am getting up for a particular purpose—very different from what appears at present.’

‘I am sorry there was such a misunderstanding,’ Christopher stammered, looking upon the ground uncertain and ashamed.  ‘Yet I am not, either, for I am very glad you have not undergone such trials, of course.  But the fact is, I—being in the neighbourhood—I ventured to call on a matter of business, relating to a poem which I had the pleasure of setting to music at the beginning of the year.’

Ethelberta was only a little less ill at ease than Christopher showed himself to be by this way of talking.

‘Will you walk slowly on?’ she said gently to the two young men, ‘and take the children with you; this gentleman wishes to speak to me on business.’

The biggest young man caught up a little one under his arm, and plunged amid the boughs; another little one lingered behind for a few moments to look shyly at Christopher, with an oblique manner of hiding her mouth against her shoulder and her eyes behind her pinafore.  Then she vanished, the boy and the second young man followed, and Ethelberta and Christopher stood within the wood-bound circle alone.

‘I hope I have caused no inconvenience by interrupting the proceedings,’ said Christopher softly; ‘but I so very much wished to see you!’

‘Did you, indeed—really wish to see me?’ she said gladly.  ‘Never mind inconvenience then; it is a word which seems shallow in meaning under the circumstances.  I surely must say that a visit is to my advantage, must I not?  I am not as I was, you see, and may receive as advantages what I used to consider as troubles.’

‘Has your life really changed so much?’

‘It has changed.  But what I first meant was that an interesting visitor at a wrong time is better than a stupid one at a right time.’

‘I had been behind the trees for some minutes, looking at you, and thinking of you; but what you were doing rather interrupted my first meditation.  I had thought of a meeting in which we should continue our intercourse at the point at which it was broken off years ago, as if the omitted part had not existed at all; but something, I cannot tell what, has upset all that feeling, and—’

‘I can soon tell you the meaning of my extraordinary performance,’ Ethelberta broke in quickly, and with a little trepidation.  ‘My mother-in-law, Lady Petherwin, is dead; and she has left me nothing but her house and furniture in London—more than I deserve, but less than she had distinctly led me to expect; and so I am somewhat in a corner.’

‘It is always so.’

‘Not always, I think.  But this is how it happened.  Lady Petherwin was very capricious; when she was not foolishly kind she was unjustly harsh.  A great many are like it, never thinking what a good thing it would be, instead of going on tacking from side to side between favour and cruelty, to keep to a mean line of common justice.  And so we quarrelled, and she, being absolute mistress of all her wealth, destroyed her will that was in my favour, and made another, leaving me nothing but the fag-end of the lease of the town-house and the furniture in it.  Then, when we were abroad, she turned to me again, forgave everything, and, becoming ill afterwards, wrote a letter to the brother, to whom she had left the bulk of her property, stating that I was to have twenty-thousand of the one-hundred-thousand pounds she had bequeathed to him—as in the original will—doing this by letter in case anything should happen to her before a new will could be considered, drawn, and signed, and trusting to his honour quite that he would obey her expressed wish should she die abroad.  Well, she did die, in the full persuasion that I was provided for; but her brother (as I secretly expected all the time) refused to be morally bound by a document which had no legal value, and the result is that he has everything, except, of course, the furniture and the lease.  It would have been enough to break the heart of a person who had calculated upon getting a fortune, which I never did; for I felt always like an intruder and a bondswoman, and had wished myself out of the Petherwin family a hundred times, with my crust of bread and liberty.  For one thing, I was always forbidden to see my relatives, and it pained me much.  Now I am going to move for myself, and consider that I have a good chance of success in what I may undertake, because of an indifference I feel about succeeding which gives the necessary coolness that any great task requires.’

‘I presume you mean to write more poems?’

‘I cannot—that is, I can write no more that satisfy me.  To blossom into rhyme on the sparkling pleasures of life, you must be under the influence of those pleasures, and I am at present quite removed from them—surrounded by gaunt realities of a very different description.’

‘Then try the mournful.  Trade upon your sufferings: many do, and thrive.’

‘It is no use to say that—no use at all.  I cannot write a line of verse.  And yet the others flowed from my heart like a stream.  But nothing is so easy as to seem clever when you have money.’

‘Except to seem stupid when you have none,’ said Christopher, looking at the dead leaves.

Ethelberta allowed herself to linger on that thought for a few seconds; and continued, ‘Then the question arose, what was I to do?  I felt that to write prose would be an uncongenial occupation, and altogether a poor prospect for a woman like me.  Finally I have decided to appear in public.’

‘Not on the stage?’

‘Certainly not on the stage.  There is no novelty in a poor lady turning actress, and novelty is what I want.  Ordinary powers exhibited in a new way effect as much as extraordinary powers exhibited in an old way.’

‘Yes—so they do.  And extraordinary powers, and a new way too, would be irresistible.’

‘I don’t calculate upon both.  I had written a prose story by request, when it was found that I had grown utterly inane over verse.  It was written in the first person, and the style was modelled after De Foe’s.  The night before sending it off, when I had already packed it up, I was reading about the professional story-tellers of Eastern countries, who devoted their lives to the telling of tales.  I unfastened the manuscript and retained it, convinced that I should do better by telling the story.’

‘Well thought of!’ exclaimed Christopher, looking into her face.  ‘There is a way for everybody to live, if they can only find it out.’

‘It occurred to me,’ she continued, blushing slightly, ‘that tales of the weird kind were made to be told, not written.  The action of a teller is wanted to give due effect to all stories of incident; and I hope that a time will come when, as of old, instead of an unsocial reading of fiction at home alone, people will meet together cordially, and sit at the feet of a professed romancer.  I am going to tell my tales before a London public.  As a child, I had a considerable power in arresting the attention of other children by recounting adventures which had never happened; and men and women are but children enlarged a little.  Look at this.’

She drew from her pocket a folded paper, shook it abroad, and disclosed a rough draft of an announcement to the effect that Mrs. Petherwin, Professed Story-teller, would devote an evening to that ancient form of the romancer’s art, at a well-known fashionable hall in London.  ‘Now you see,’ she continued, ‘the meaning of what you observed going on here.  That you heard was one of three tales I am preparing, with a view of selecting the best.  As a reserved one, I have the tale of my own life—to be played as a last card.  It was a private rehearsal before my brothers and sisters—not with any view of obtaining their criticism, but that I might become accustomed to my own voice in the presence of listeners.’

‘If I only had had half your enterprise, what I might have done in the world!’

‘Now did you ever consider what a power De Foe’s manner would have if practised by word of mouth?  Indeed, it is a style which suits itself infinitely better to telling than to writing, abounding as it does in colloquialisms that are somewhat out of place on paper in these days, but have a wonderful power in making a narrative seem real.  And so, in short, I am going to talk De Foe on a subject of my own.  Well?’

The last word had been given tenderly, with a long-drawn sweetness, and was caused by a look that Christopher was bending upon her at the moment, in which he revealed that he was thinking less of the subject she was so eagerly and hopefully descanting upon than upon her aspect in explaining it.  It is a fault of manner particularly common among men newly imported into the society of bright and beautiful women; and we will hope that, springing as it does from no unworthy source, it is as soon forgiven in the general world as it was here.

‘I was only following a thought,’ said Christopher:—‘a thought of how I used to know you, and then lost sight of you, and then discovered you famous, and how we are here under these sad autumn trees, and nobody in sight.’

‘I think it must be tea-time,’ she said suddenly.  ‘Tea is a great meal with us here—you will join us, will you not?’  And Ethelberta began to make for herself a passage through the boughs.  Another rustle was heard a little way off, and one of the children appeared.

‘Emmeline wants to know, please, if the gentleman that come to see ’ee will stay to tea; because, if so, she’s agoing to put in another spoonful for him and a bit of best green.’

‘O Georgina—how candid!  Yes, put in some best green.’

Before Christopher could say any more to her, they were emerging by the corner of the cottage, and one of the brothers drew near them.  ‘Mr. Julian, you’ll bide and have a cup of tea wi’ us?’ he inquired of Christopher.  ‘An old friend of yours, is he not, Mrs. Petherwin?  Dan and I be going back to Sandbourne to-night, and we can walk with ’ee as far as the station.’

‘I shall be delighted,’ said Christopher; and they all entered the cottage.  The evening had grown clearer by this time; the sun was peeping out just previous to departure, and sent gold wires of light across the glades and into the windows, throwing a pattern of the diamond quarries, and outlines of the geraniums in pots, against the opposite wall.  One end of the room was polygonal, such a shape being dictated by the exterior design; in this part the windows were placed, as at the east end of continental churches.  Thus, from the combined effects of the ecclesiastical lancet lights and the apsidal shape of the room, it occurred to Christopher that the sisters were all a delightful set of pretty saints, exhibiting themselves in a lady chapel, and backed up by unkempt major prophets, as represented by the forms of their big brothers.

Christopher sat down to tea as invited, squeezing himself in between two children whose names were almost as long as their persons, and whose tin cups discoursed primitive music by means of spoons rattled inside them until they were filled.  The tea proceeded pleasantly, notwithstanding that the cake, being a little burnt, tasted on the outside like the latter plums in snapdragon.  Christopher never could meet the eye of Picotee, who continued in a wild state of flushing all the time, fixing her looks upon the sugar-basin, except when she glanced out of the window to see how the evening was going on, and speaking no word at all unless it was to correct a small sister of somewhat crude manners as regards filling the mouth, which Picotee did in a whisper, and a gentle inclination of her mouth to the little one’s ear, and a still deeper blush than before.

Their visitor next noticed that an additional cup-and-saucer and plate made their appearance occasionally at the table, were silently replenished, and then carried off by one of the children to an inner apartment.

‘Our mother is bedridden,’ said Ethelberta, noticing Christopher’s look at the proceeding.  ‘Emmeline attends to the household, except when Picotee is at home, and Joey attends to the gate; but our mother’s affliction is a very unfortunate thing for the poor children.  We are thinking of a plan of living which will, I hope, be more convenient than this is; but we have not yet decided what to do.’  At this minute a carriage and pair of horses became visible through one of the angular windows of the apse, in the act of turning in from the highway towards the park gate.  The boy who answered to the name of Joey sprang up from the table with the promptness of a Jack-in-the-box, and ran out at the door.  Everybody turned as the carriage passed through the gate, which Joey held open, putting his other hand where the brim of his hat would have been if he had worn one, and lapsing into a careless boy again the instant that the vehicle had gone by.

‘There’s a tremendous large dinner-party at the House to-night,’ said Emmeline methodically, looking at the equipage over the edge of her teacup, without leaving off sipping.  ‘That was Lord Mountclere.  He’s a wicked old man, they say.’

‘Lord Mountclere?’ said Ethelberta musingly.  ‘I used to know some friends of his.  In what way is he wicked?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Emmeline, with simplicity.  ‘I suppose it is because he breaks the commandments.  But I wonder how a big rich lord can want to steal anything.’  Emmeline’s thoughts of breaking commandments instinctively fell upon the eighth, as being in her ideas the only case wherein the gain could be considered as at all worth the hazard.

Ethelberta said nothing; but Christopher thought that a shade of depression passed over her.

‘Hook back the gate, Joey,’ shouted Emmeline, when the carriage had proceeded up the drive.  ‘There’s more to come.’

Joey did as ordered, and by the time he got indoors another carriage turned in from the public road—a one-horse brougham this time.

‘I know who that is: that’s Mr.